When comparing Pixel.Tools vs Krita, the Slant community recommends Krita for most people. In the question“What are the best pixel art / sprite editors?”Krita is ranked 2nd while Pixel.Tools is ranked 14th. The most important reason people chose Krita is:

Krita is completely free and open source. They have raised a couple of successful Kickstarters in the past to get the initial financing and now they are accepting donations.

Pros

Pro

Offers Colordex system

Included in Pixel.Tools is the Colordex system which allows the user to utilize multiple color ramps in a single brush stroke.

Pro

Record and replay

Pro

Free and open source

Pixel.Tools is licensed by MIT, making it free of charge and open source.

Pro

Pixel with others simultaneously

Note: the multi-user feature is currently broken (at least in Chrome), but might work if using http instead of https. You can read more here.

Pro

Wacom tablet support (via plugin)

Pro

Free and open source

Krita is completely free and open source. They have raised a couple of successful Kickstarters in the past to get the initial financing and now they are accepting donations.

Pro

Easy to use layout

All the most used and useful tools are easy to find in Krita's UI and are often just one click away. They are not hidden behind menus or dropdowns.

Pro

Amazing support for displaying brushes

Krita's preset brushes are one of the default dockers. Each brush has a preview on mouseover that shows a detailed view of the type of brush involved. All the brushes also have useful and descriptive names such as "HP Pencil" or "Textured Fuzzy".

Pro

Very customizable

Although the UI is rather busy, Krita is very customizable. The editing window can be themed and the sidebar can be customized extensively throw many dockers or panes.

Pro

Easy editing in a tiled view

Tiled view that shows your image tiled in the editor, and permits you to edit it as you are seeing it tiled. If the brush passes out of your texture, it will just automatically wrap back the painting to the other side of the original texture, while permitting you to paint and see the results on any of the tiled "clones" (the shortcut key to activate this is w by default).

Pro

Constantly updated

Krita is getting constant releases with updates and bug fixes. New features are added at a pace that far surpasses the other alternatives.

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Cons

Con

Unintuitive interface

Zooming is reversed, the screen flickers a lot, and the flip/rotate selection is very buggy (selection will re-size though it should not). Essentially, the interface of Pixel.Tools is clunky and unintuitive.

Con

Poor Touch Controls.

They are still pretty much a WIP. But they are getting there.

Con

Working with text is not that pleasant

Con

Documentation is lacking

Krita's official documentation is incomplete in some areas, especially for new features that are constantly added. But this is compensated with it's great design and usability which makes it easier to understand how things work.

Con

New features are not tested thoroughly

Since releases are so often and with little time between them, usually new features are not tested a lot and this can bring a lot of bugs with them. Which fortunately are quickly patched in the next release.

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